Many products that are popular gift items usually cost in the $200-$700 range such as iPods, game consoles, digital cameras and so on. However, most people prefer to spend between $50-$100 for a gift. Therefore, there is a gap between what people are willing to spend and the cost of the most popular gift ideas. One of two things usually take place. Either the gift giver spends more than he wants and buys the popular gift, thus annoying the gift giver due to the lack of funds for more important items for himself. Or the gift giver buys a cheaper gift which is in his price range. This second route causes a number of issues. The gift is likely something that the gift receiver did not want, which in turn causes the gift receiver to be less than satisfied with the gift. This then results in the gift being exchanged which is a waste of time for the gift receiver. Another result is the simple lack of use or re-gifting of the unwanted gift. Over 57% of Americans have received gifts that they do not want according to the eBay Press. Therefore, the difference between the cost of desired gifts and the amount people are willing to spend is a significant problem.
To overcome the disparity between gift amounts people are willing to spend and the cost of popular gifts, people have combined efforts to purchase a single item. For example, friends who wanted to buy a birthday gift for another friend would usually pick someone to collect all of the money from each friend and then buy the gift using the collected money. Using this method, a group of six friends who each spend $50 are able to buy a $300 digital camera rather than six individual undesirable gifts. While this method enables a group of people to buy a more expensive gift, it has several drawbacks. If a person forgets to pay or changes his mind, someone, usually the person doing the collecting, has to contribute additional funds or otherwise all of the time and effort would be wasted. If friends are located in different parts of campus, different towns, across the country or even across the world, it can be very difficult to collect money from everyone and deliver the gift. Social awkwardness arises if people do not pay immediately and the collector must keep reminding him to pay. Also, it is difficult to divide up the costs as well as for contributors to have the right change. Therefore, manually collecting money and reminding people to contribute to a gift is not a very efficient solution.
When people register for gift registries such as wedding and baby registries, depending on the gifts available, gift buyers buy items that fit in their price range, and if nothing fits in their price range they deviate from the registry and purchase a likely unwanted gift. To combat this problem with gift registries, U.S. Pat. No. 7,013,292 ('292) to Hsu et al. with a corresponding website, felicite.com, teaches a partial purchase feature for gift registries which allows gift givers to make a partial contribution towards any gift in the registry. When the contributions add up to the cost of the item, it is purchased. However, the '292 patent is lacking in a number of areas; specifically, that it must be used in conjunction with a registry system.
Other websites also aggregate money, such as chipin.com, fundable.com and paypal.com, but each has areas that would benefit from improvements.